The refrain offered by Washington Huskies players and coaches was universal enough to imply rehearsal.

A win is a win, they said. Hey, we’re 1-0, after all. Yeah, there’s a lot of room for improvement, but the mistakes can be easily fixed, and hey, is it just me or is there an echo on Montlake?

“We’ve just got to keep getting better, keep grinding and we’ll be all right,” said junior cornerback Desmond Trufant.

“As a program, we’re excited to be 1-0,” said coach Steve Sarkisian. “… Yet we understand we have a great deal of work to do to get better.”

“We’ve definitely got to get better,” Trufant said again, and again, and again. “We’re not satisfied.”

Gee, really? After scraping past FCS foe Eastern Washington, 30-27, in a game the Eagles dominated statistically but ultimately gave away with too many turnovers, the Huskies have very little with which to be satisfied. Or even pleased.

Aside from finishing the game with more points – and let’s give them credit for that accomplishment, since that is the main objective – the Huskies did nothing to inspire confidence that they’re certain to build off the momentum of last season’s Holiday Bowl victory.

Bo Levi Mitchell and the headstrong, chip-on-shoulder Eagles strolled into Husky Stadium like they owned it, and they’d have been dancing on the field afterward had Trufant not intercepted an underthrown fade route in the end zone with 29 seconds to play, one of the few mistakes made by Mitchell in a game he otherwise dominated.

The brash kid with too many names set career highs in pass attempts (69), completions (39), yards (473) and opposing fan swears induced (12,394). He threw four touchdown passes, too, was always several steps ahead of Washington’s pass rush and made receivers Brandon Kaufman and Nicholas Edwards look like All-American candidates.

Even Mitchell, who earlier this week predicted a win during an interview on a local radio station, was surprised by his final totals.

“I knew we would put up numbers,” Mitchell said, “but I didn’t know we would put up career numbers like that.”

Then again, his receivers rarely had anyone covering them. Trufant was abused by Kaufman – 10 catches, 140 yards – for much of the afternoon, finally getting the best of the 6-foot-6 receiver on Eastern’s final play from scrimmage.

Mitchell, on 2nd-and-10 from UW’s 25-yard line, looked for Kaufman in the back right corner of the end zone. But the ball was underthrown, Trufant had strong coverage and the Huskies corner timed his leap well enough to snag the ball from Kaufman and prevent what would have been one of the more deflating season-opening losses in program history.

“We knew it wasn’t going to be an easy game,” Trufant said. “They’re the defending national champions. We didn’t overlook them at all. We knew they were going to pass the ball. That’s their strength. We bent a little bit, but we didn’t break.”

What he meant to say was that they didn’t lose. Because a secondary can win and still be broken.

Sarkisian, predictably, didn’t seem to be particularly alarmed by the ease with which Mitchell carved his secondary. Youth played a factor, the coach said.

“The reality of it is, when you’re playing a lot of young guys, you’re going to make some young guy mistakes,” Sarkisian said. “And as a coaching staff, the challenge for us is to continually push them and coach them to where we grow from these ball games as we move forward early in the season.”

Young guy mistakes?

“When he scrambled out of the pocket, we have guys that are in coverage that run and go to tackle the quarterback because he’s out of the pocket, and they’re leaving their men free,” Sarkisian said, and yeah, that sounds pretty familiar. “You can’t do that. So we have to coach that better.”

And they have to coach that quickly, because next week comes Hawaii, and its quarterback, Bryant Moniz, the nation’s leading passer last season with 5,040 yards and 39 touchdowns. Think he’s looking at what Mitchell did to the Huskies, licking his chops, envisioning a similar performance?

The answer is no, he’s not. Because Hawaii is playing as I type this, and winning, by the way, leading Colorado 17-0 at halftime.

Saturday’s game was not disappointing simply because the Huskies only beat an FCS opponent by three points. Sarkisian will tell anyone who will listen how fond he is of Eastern Washington, how talented they are as a team, how dangerous their passing attack is, how shiny their shoes are.

He’s right. Eastern won the FCS title last year for a reason, and they’re ranked No. 1 again this year because they’re still really, really good.

A competitive game was almost expected, though Huskies running back Chris Polk said afterward that he was “very surprised” by how close the final score wound up being.

The problem was how familiar Washington’s secondary looked. Slow. Soft. Unsure of itself. Yes, they were playing without senior cornerback Quinton Richardson. And Justin Glenn suffering from cramps forced third-string corner Tony Gobern into action in the fourth quarter.

This isn’t to say the Huskies took any kind of step back. Keith Price was solid in his second career start. Polk showed no ill effects coming off a knee scope on Aug. 18. Erik Folk was nails. The Huskies took advantage of two muffed punts by Eastern. And they didn’t give the ball away a single time.

But you don’t allow 473 passing yards to an FCS team by accident. It would be silly to panic. It would be sillier to chalk this up to rust and first-time jitters.

“We know we did a lot of things wrong today,” Trufant said. “We’ve just got to look at the film.”